3 Easy Ways to Create WooCommerce Private Content

Lots of online shops need to create WooCommerce private content. Perhaps you want to make your entire WooCommerce store private and hide it from public view. Maybe you need to add private content within a public WooCommerce store, such as hidden products or categories (or a wholesale WooCommerce store). Or you might want to lock down parts or all of your WooCommerce store so that only logged in users can see it.

Whatever your reason for creating WooCommerce private content, I’ll tell you how to do it and which plugin to use. You’ll learn how to create private content that is hidden behind simple password protection, and how to restrict it to specific logged in WordPress users or entire user roles.

Keep reading to find out how!

Two plugins to create private WooCommerce content

I’m going to teach you 3 methods to create private WooCommerce content. They’ll all use one of the following plugins:

WooCommerce Protected Categories – A WordPress plugin that lets you protect categories within WooCommerce, either by adding password protection or restricting them to certain customers or user levels.

WooCommerce Private Store – WordPress plugin to hide the whole of WooCommerce so that only people with the password or logged in users can access it.

#1 – Create WooCommerce password protected categories

The WooCommerce Protected Categories plugin lets you password protect any or all of your WooCommerce product categories. When you password protect a category, all its products and any sub-categories will be protected with the same password.

It’s a really user-friendly plugin to create WooCommerce private content because users only have to enter the password once, and it will unlock the entire category.

There are options to choose whether to show or hide the protected categories and their products in the public parts of your site. (If you choose to show them publicly, then people will be prompted for a password before they can add to cart or view the single product page.)

To use this option for your private WooCommerce content, simply install the plugin and go to add or edit the category that you want to make private. Select the ‘Password protected’ option and enter 1 or more passwords. You can add as many passwords as you like.

Whenever someone clicks on a link to a protected category or content within the category, they’ll be asked for the password. You can also create a category login form which customers can use to access all the WooCommerce private content on your site.

WooCommerce Protected Categories

#2 – Create WooCommerce private content that only certain users or roles can see

Some WooCommerce store owners don’t want to give passwords to their customers – especially if they already have a user account on your WordPress site. WooCommerce Protected Categories also comes with an option to create private WooCommerce content that is only visible to specific user accounts, or certain user roles.

When you create private WooCommerce content by restricting a category to specific users or roles, only those logged in users can see it. The plugin makes the category and its content private and hidden from public view, so no one else can see them.

The instructions for creating private user or role protected categories are similar to method 1, above. Install the plugin and add or edit a product category. Choose the ‘Protected’ option from the ‘Visibility’ settings for the category, and restrict the content to selected users or roles.

#3 – Make the whole of WooCommerce private & hidden

Finally, here’s an option for people who want to turn their entire WooCommerce store into hidden content. This creates a 100% hidden shop, while leaving the other parts of your website public. (E.g. the Homepage, About page and blog).

To hide WooCommerce and make its content private, you need the WooCommerce Private Store plugin. It hides all your WooCommerce content from public view. This includes your main shop page, product pages, product categories, tag archives, cart and checkout. To unlock the WooCommerce private content, customers must enter a password or log into their user account. (Depending on which options you choose on the settings page).

This WooCommerce private content plugin is incredibly simply to use. First, install the plugin and activate your license key. Second, tick the ‘Logged In Users’ box if you want to unlock WooCommerce content for logged in users, or add a password if you’re using the password protection option. Third, go and make yourself a drink – you’ve finished work and your WooCommerce content is now private!